What Does Your Hair Reveal About Your Health?

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Ashley Koff: Hi. I’m dietician Ashley Koff, and I’m here with Simply Natural Living. And today here with Linda Kammins from Linda Kammins Salon and Products, dear friend of mine and such an incredible expert on hair health, nutrition, how to get that healthy hair.

Linda Kammins: Right.

Ashley Koff: And have it look great too. To that point of, you know we want our hair to look great, so when our hair doesn’t look great or the way that we want it to, we may first think of that aesthetically, but what you’ve always told me is your hair says a lot about your health, and I think that’s a really important one. So, tell me a couple of examples of what your hair can tell you about your health.

Linda Kammins: Well there is mental and emotional health as well here.

Ashley Koff: Absolutely. We’ll certainly get into that.

Linda Kammins: What I find are some abusive natures, which can really damage the hair. Back in the nineties I remember a lot of women with the weaves, and you know, and they were so afraid of their thin hair that they had to wear these things all the time, and what was happening was a slow degration of the hair; there was this constant pulling of the hair and they were actually getting bald spots from constantly having to

Ashley Koff: From what they were doing to it.

Linda Kammins: Yeah.

Ashley Koff: Now does your thinning hair actually—I mean is it thyroid health?

Linda Kammins: Yes.

Ashley Koff: Is it—tell me what you’ve come to see.

Linda Kammins: Yes. Yeah. Well I see a lot of that, but it seems like we live in a very stressful environment, and so you can kind of expect these things; it happened to me as well, you know. But for me, my personal story is I let my hair go dirty all summer.

Ashley Koff: Okay.

Linda Kammins: You know I washed it just once a week. But eventually my hair got used to that, you know, and I didn’t have to wash it as often and I found out it was really clean, and I’m hearing the same thing from my clients.

Ashley Koff: Okay.

Linda Kammins: That their hair is actually staying clean because you’re brushing off all of the dead skin cells.

Ashley Koff: Right.

Linda Kammins: There’s no way to trap those oils anymore. And plus all of those oils are really good for your hair; I can’t bottle those. You know?

Ashley Koff: Yeah. So that’s the—that’s the recovery side of it. So we feel like the thinning can be attributed to hormonal, or as you were saying, over cleaning it, right? There’s that part. Yeah.

Linda Kammins: Over cleaning it and stress components. I think when people are stressful; this is when their hair falls out. You know like you scared me to death and my hair fell out.

Linda Kammins: There’s some truth to that.

Ashley Koff: What about when your hair—from the texture? You know I have a lot of people that will say to me, my hair is thick, unmanageable, you know, and it wasn’t always that way. Is that hormonal? Is it..

Linda Kammins: It’s usually product related. You know?

Ashley Koff: Interesting.

Linda Kammins: Yeah. Yeah. Because what I see is people using strong detergents and heavy conditioners, and it’s really really expanding their hair, it’s swelling it actually.

Ashley Koff: Wow.

Linda Kammins: And so they don’t even realize that they have actually kind of silky hair underneath that. It can take up to six months sometimes to reveal that they didn’t have that really porous, heavy, non reflective of light hair, you know? And then once they start treating it properly and the cuticle closes down, then it starts reflecting light and it soothes the whole thing down and their hair gets calmer.

Ashley Koff: And what about with split ends? I hear a lot, you know people will tell me, I mean they’ve said everything from I’m not getting enough iron to you know I’m—You know I need—you know, more B vitamins, this sort of a thing. Are split ends nutritional? Are they, or are they product or usage?

Linda Kammins: Well we are a result of what we eat.

Ashley Koff: Right. Right.

Linda Kammins: Let’s face it. So if our bodies are acidic, our hair’s not going to get a lot of nutrition. And we do need to give ourselves essential fatty acids everyday

Ashley Koff: Great.

Linda Kammins: I really believe in that so that’s really important.

Ashley Koff: Ditto. I love hemp. I tell everybody that it has that gamma-linoleic fatty acid.

Linda Kammins: Yes. Yes.

Ashley Koff: It’s a big word for an omega six, but great for hair, skin and nails.

Linda Kammins: And it’s really delicious too.

Ashley Koff: Yeah. Absolutely.

Linda Kammins: You know so if people consider putting that in their diet, among many other of the other things that you would recommend, Ashley.

Because you know that even better than I do.

Ashley Koff: Do you feel like we’ve had worse hair since we’ve followed fat free diets?

Linda Kammins: Oh God yes.

Ashley Koff: Yes. So another reason to say yay to the fats. Okay so I love it.

Linda Kammins: Absolutely.

Ashley Koff: Okay so we’ve got bring on the fats, we’ve got, you know

making sure that the thinning can be related to your nutrition. It can also certainly be an indicator that sleep and stress, and these sorts of things are getting the better of you. And I love that; when your hair is maybe feeling thick or out of control or a texture change, while it could be hormones, it could actually be poor products.